The Angu112h 0f 2tar2
by Captor.MEM
Summary: Connection to Psion/HU-1 NeuroLink established. Uploading files at a rate of 2.8GBs. Please wait. . . . Upload Completed. / A collection of short drabbles and one-shots I've written featuring The Helmsman/Psiioniic. Drabbles are mainly written in his point of view. Will NOT be linear, but date-labeled! TW for graphic violence, body horror, Helmsman stuff. Prompts Accepted.
1. Origins

God, it's been years since I've done this. But here we go. The first installment in a series of memories from the perspective of Salinx "Psiioniic" "Sally" "Sal" "Helmsman" Captor. Really just something I drabbled up at least a year ago, but decided it would make a good first post. None of these are going to be very linear. I'll post 'em as I drabble 'em. They're just here to scratch my, and maybe your, Helmsman Angst itch.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It's a starry sky. Bright, luminescent moons are in the air, shining light down upon the nearby glowy-bluey tree tops. You appear to be in a forest of some kind. Laying on your back. it's quiet, peaceful. The view shifts, and now it's looking at a redbloods face- one similiar to Karkat and Kankri as they might be, as one might imagine, just... stronger, somehow. Younger then you, too. Seven sweeps, maybe? His face is... More angular, thin with one too many missed meals. It's got a grin on it though, and it's one you can feel yourself returning. "Hey." is the whisper. The voice is Kadians. It's definitely his, all light and airy and unlike your baritone/tenor mix, beautiful. "Thup." is the whisper back. A conversation ensues. One in which you compliment the night, the starry skies, and in which he returns in kind. It isn't too long before he's speaking, rambling on as he often does. "All the stars, Salinx. They're all pretty, right?"

You agree with him, turn your gaze up to the sky again. They are indeed pretty. "Each one is different. Each one is a different size, some are even different colors. They're all different dimensions and different places in the universe, yet, when viewed by just a couple of kids like us, we say they're all pretty. There's no differential view. I don't look at them and seperate them into colors and sizes, I don't look at them and say, that one is a bad color, it should be destroyed. I look at them and smile, because they're all as beautiful as the day they were made."

Your gaze turns to him again and there's a wave of respect flowing through your mind for this troll. He's such a good speaker- Why doesn't anyone ever /listen/ to him? it boggles your mind how they want to cull him just for who he is.

"Yeah." You agree, again. "I mean, ith really thtupid? That thingth are even judged that way. I mean, we can't help how the fuck we're created, right?" You chuckle and trail off to sigh a bit. You really want him to stay here with you. It isn't often you get to talk to him, with your job at the shipyards and his job running about causing more trouble then you ever did. He agrees with you and then reaches out his hand in the dirt. You take it and squeeze, hard.

"Ith going to be hard, you know that, right?" You know he knows what you mean. "Changing their minds? Yes, it will be. But like many things... Striving to do something good is often hard." You nod and he scootches over to you. You wrap an arm around his shoulder. "Yeah. There'th a lot of thingth that thould be thtrived for." You hint with a smile.

"One of thoth thingth being you telling me whatht really bothering you." Your grin widens, and he looks quizzical. "How did you know?" He queries, and you chuckle some. "You alwayth get preachy when thomething'th on your mind." Now he laughs gently and you can feel him squeeze your hand tightly. Worriedly.

"Come on." You urge, and he sits up, as do you. "You can tell me." A surge of rail feelings pushes over you, but you fight them down. He's not your rail. Not yet. He looks to you and you watch him shake his head. "I can trust you, I know I can. Yet you are better off not knowing things that could be tortured out of you if one of your ships was to be captured." Now you frown. Your job at the shipyard was... simple. it paid well, enough to keep the drones off your back about your dead lusus and your status as "still cullable wriggler". But the fact remained- Working on the ships was dangerous. And if they knew you were hanging out with a redblood... You would be dragged off, tortured for the mutants whereabouts. "Kadian..." You begin, quietly. "What if... What if I wath to leave the yardth?" You can tell your query has stunned him, because his eyes widen and his eyebrows flick up in surprise. "if you were to... leave the shipyards? But why would you? You've told me yourself, it pays and it isn't bad work..."

He sounds like he's having a hard time believing you, but the more you think about it, the more you smile. "Yeah. if I wath to leave them! I mean, ith dangerouth and... Hell, I could be culled for mutiny or thomething, but... I could be culled jutht talking to you." Your smile, by now, is wide enough to reach ear to ear, and it's contagious, because he's smiling too. "if you were to leave... you could be with me." He muses, quietly. Some quick nods are had by you and you grab his other hand, moving in front of him to look him in the eye. "I could be with you." You restate his musings. "I could be. I could keep you thafe. No more worrying, no more wondering if the other wath okay, we would know at the drop of a fork." He winces at the word fork and you bite back your tongue. But then he smiles and nods. Those certain pale feelings increase and you squeeze /both/ his hands. Reiterate. "I could be with you."

He doesn't get it and he nods. "Yeah, you could be. We could walk together and talk together and sleep together- You know Ryn would enjoy your company-" "No." You push one hand out of his and put a finger to his lips. "You denth little thit, get what i'm athking here." You grin and his eyes widen when he realizes what you mean. A few minutes pass and, silently... He holds up two fingers. You hold up your own. And together, you make a diamond. Now red is spilling down his face and yellow is spilling down yours. You've never felt such a surge of happiness and you're certain that you'll never be this happy- or this loved- Again. You spend the rest of the night talking, as the moons rise and fall, lusii come and go, you both just talk. He tells you of his plans to turn the world around and you see, in his eyes, determination and you tell him you'll gladly help him. He tells you of his plans, his worries, his fears, how he fears Ryn will get brought up into this and how he could end up hurting everyone- You promise him, /promise/ him, that all he has to worry about is teaching the crowd- You'll do the protecting from then on. You promise and you finish out your first railing session with a hug and a pale nose-kiss and a forehead bump. Then he stands, and you stand, and he heads off in the direction he came- You head back to the shipyards.

You had a shipmaster to piss off and a redblood to follow.


	2. The Death of a Preacher

This one's from a couple years ago, now, just something a friend of mine wrote that I've adapted for this platform. It's a bit, erm. Stale, I guess? It's still relevant, though, so I'm posting it. It's quite old though, as said, and since was written by a friend of mine, the style is a bit different, I'd think? Despite my adaptation. Warnings for graphic imagery.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A dark sky, a crowd seething with rage.

"Pleath. Pleath, don't! Take me inthead!" A voice- Crystal clear, lovely, even, rings out... Despite the lisp that maybe makes it not-so-clear. Psiioniic's voice. Your voice. "They NEED him!" Your vision was looking at a purpleblood- Pain sprawled across your mind now, as the highblood backhanded you.

"Silence, pissblood. You have no permission to speak here." Your vision moved to the ground, yellow already spattering it, dripping from your nose, from your mouth. Then, slowly, you looked towards... Kadian. The redblood, beaten up, being dragged towards a tall pillar of stone, upon which Her Imperiousness sat, twirling her culling fork. You could HEAR her laugh, a cold sound indeed. Two white irons hung from chains, and as the minutes went by... No, no, you didn't want to see this, yet, you could not drag your eyes away. That was your moirail being led up there. Your moirail, about to die, before your eyes. He was taking it like a champ, though... A thud alerts you to Darkleer, the blueblood. He's standing over the Disciple, bloody, holding her book in one hand and her hair in the other. But the look he is giving her... You know that look. You have that look for Kadian. You hope she'll use her charms to help Darkleer decide to let her escape... To the left, the Dolorosa. Ryn. Origin. Mom. Her head is hung low, with Dualscar holding her tight to him, a sneer on his face... That fucking asshat. He's finally getting what he wants. You hope she bites out his throat.

The Condesce said a few words, just a few trivial "I won!" words, and you'd screamed out. You couldn't bear to hear her voice, you couldn't bear to see this happening.

'Thop!', you'd yelled. 'You can't do thith! I won't let you!'. Psionics moved about now as the you fought back, swinging weapons of every type at the Condesce with an incredible burst of psii energy. You were suppressed, but somewhere, you'd gotten the energy to do this. Maybe it was your last ditch effort- Maybe it was just you overloading the collar arond your neck. In any cade, she, that disgusting fuschia wretch who was making your life MISERABLE, evaded each weapon with little steps, and small laughs, then, she points, and she orders, and suddenly three highbloods were on the you, beating your head, pulling at your horns and tearing at your eyes.

This was awful. You could only watch from a pool of blood on the ground, your vision fading in and out, as Kadian was strung, up, the manacles heated. You think you hear him talking. You strain to hear him, but someone's clapped your ears in the scuffle, the tinnitus ringing in your ears dulling everything else out. It feels like minutes in which you memorize his face, his lips, the way he speaks like you can know what he's saying just from how his lips form. He's looking right at you from that point high up on the stone. At his words, the crowd around you revolts, and pushes to get closer to him. Someone steps on your side, and someone's pulling you to your feet, some half-baked highblood who wants to make sure that you see this... whatever this was.

Something snapped, something twanged, and two arrows flew into his chest, the chest of your moirail, your Vantas, spilling red blood. The crowd was silent and then, "See?" Said the Condesce, curse her fucking name. "All this time you've been listening to a mutant! He would use you to earn a place on the castes, ya hear? His problems are nothing compared to the REAL trolls, with real blood colors, not super fugly fake ones like that filth!" And so on and so forth. Your vision turns to her. Full of hatred and rage. Those around you could FEEL the hate, the wanting of you to just blast her into oblivion. It was a hate that never would settle, not as long as he lived.

Which would turn out to be a very long time indeed.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

From here on out, there's going to be some pretty graphic things happening, as the rest of what I intend to post here is from the Helmsman perspective. TW for body horror, derealization, depersonalization, graphic violence, mentions of noncon. I'm putting this here so that, if you're still with me, you're not thrown for a loop by whatever comes next. I may not post for ages at a time, though.


	3. Sweep 6 & 3 Quarters-ish of Imprisonment

"Be strong."

They were the last words the Preacher had said to him. And he had been trying.

It was day two thousand, eight hundred and ninety two of his imprisonment. Sweep Six and three quarters, somewhere in the fifth dim season of the sweep. Of course, dim and dark seasons only applied when he was on Alternia. But he had not been. Not for two thousand, eight hundred and ninety two days.

She had yet to catch on that he was still He and not what she wanted, which was the Crown Jewel of the Empire, The Battleship Condescension. He planned on keeping it that way. He would wait this out. Someone would come to free him. Someone would realize that He was still alive, someone would realize that he was gone. Someone had to be left alive to care for him.

He couldn't bear to think otherwise. The data calculations flowed, the algorithms calculating out his percentage of survival otherwise. Point three percent was not what he was hoping for. As long as he kept himself convinced that the rebellion would start up again, his chance of survival remained firmly lodged at sixty-eight point four. That was a much better percentage.

He had always liked percentages. The idea that there was a chance, of knowing exactly how much that chance was, kept him going. That there was a chance he would survive to help the next Preacher on to victory. He couldn't quite remember who the Preacher was. He was certain there was another name in there somewhere, too. Something lovely, and solid, firm. With a harsh sound and a loving gaze. Something that said, "Be strong."

Those words kept him going, and he muttered them to himself in the deepest recesses of his pan, where she hadn't thought to enslave just yet. A warning beeps in his head. She was coming. She enjoyed his company too much still, fresh from the raw excitement of Winning. He would just have to play her game until she tired of him.

The percentage that she would fully convert him after she tired of him was eighty-two-point-six.

So, of course, this meant he had to make sure she wouldn't tire of him TOO quickly. Not before he had a chance to devise a daring escape, preferably full of explosions and her rueing his name. What was it? ... He doesn't remember that either. Something with I. There was something about an I. A symbol?

The door slides open and she enters. As taught, he greets her. "Hello, Empress. How may I be of service?" She enjoys his voice, he knows. Enjoys knowing there's a troll there under all of that wire, willing to do her every command. Or unwilling, but pretending. But of course, she doesn't know he's pretending. He overwrote her script ages ago.

"Sup sugarbuns." And she stands there, smirking at him. "Let me see, service, huh..." She reaches up and drags a gold-painted fingernail gently down his cheek. He has yet to lose much weight. She still cares about him, and as such, he still has cute chubby little cheeks she can touch and pet.

He has to resist pulling a face at her. He HATES it when she gets all touchy feely. "For starters, how aboat a coordinate update? We've GOTTA be gettin close." She was young, and impatient. Not terribly young, of course, still thousands of sweeps older than he was, but for her? Oh yes, she was definitely young, not even ten thousand.

"Yes, Empress. Destination: EIM-2100. Remaining travel time at Fourteen Hours, Forty Nine Minutes and Twenty Two seconds. 22 seconds. 21 seconds. 20 seconds."

She taps his nose with every second countdown, as if syncing an internal clock. God, he hates it when she taps his nose. Every tap startles him and distracts him from his 'duties'. From pretending.

"Attabouy, honeycake." Ugh, her pet names. He HATES her pet names too. Honeycake, sugarbun, darling dear, sugar. All honey-sweet and absolutely revolting.

Something must show on his face, because her eyes narrow and she tilts her head. "Helmz...?" She says, in that sickly sweet tone. She's planning something. He's instantly wary, especially when that finger on his nose travels under his chin. She's making him look at her. "You LIKE my names, don't you?"

She's wary too, he can see it coming in from the camera feeds, how her gait changes, how she watches him. How that glimmer of malicious cruelty has sparked to life in her cold, fuschia eyes.

"Of course, Empress. Your names are beautiful. They encompass me, all that I am, all that I ever will be. Complete masterpieces that could only have been thought of by a genius of pure talent." When in doubt, stroke her ego.

But this time, it doesn't seem to be... working. Pain sensors go off in his pan, and light, yellowed droplets of moisture fall from his eyes. She is pinching the forefront of the area under his chin between her fingernails, daring him to cry out, to show pain. If he was properly installed, if he had not overridden her programs, he would not be able to.

Be strong. The words of the Preacher echo in his ears.

He doesn't cringe, or wince.

"Hmm..." She soon lets go of him, and he is relieved. She seems satisfied, but he knows he will have to play it safe for a time.

"Recalibrate your word processors. All this 'I' needs to stop. You're not yours, you're mine. Everything you do is for ME, naut you, get it?"

"Yes, Empress. Understood. Recalibration in progress . . . Estimated completion time: Two minutes. Would a reword please her Empress?" He offers gently, hoping to stay that glint in her eyes. Hoping to stave her off for just long enough...

Sixty-eight point four was a hell of a chance to survive this endless torment. He just had to hope someone would come for him.


	4. Wash Rinse and Repeat - 620 Sweeps

Featuring an appearance by Her Imperious Condescension after he has made an attempt at freedom by sending out an SOS and then deleting his own memories and program logs for the recall of the SOS. TW for abuse, helmsman stuff, memory erasure, etc! This one could be an RP prompt if I tried, holy kittens in a handbasket.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It has been six hundred and twenty sweeps.

Everything is running smoothly. Everything is running smoothly. Everything is running smoothly. Engines run at 76% capacity. The stars fly by, mere specks at this speed. Everything is running smoothly.

But Everything is a lie.

She is punishing the engine again. She has been doing this for quite some time. Her hand strokes down the keratin deposits, rests upon the aurecular intakes. She thumbs them and grins when the weight of the engine bucks under her touch.

Things run smoothly even if the engine is under stress.

It has been hours. She has tired of playing around and has begun to mess with the ships code. She is loosening the restraints on the engine- On... him? It? The engine IS him... No, it's not. He's something different. She cannot touch what he is- Yet, as the goggles lift, a camera feed- numbered 001, his data logs tell him, inactive for eighteen perigees- pops up in the core of his 'conciousness'. Something; Perhaps it is the restraints being lowered to level 4? Something nudges at him. Something is making noise. It is interfering with the ships power capacity. The levels drop to 62%. Hardly efficient. She would be displeased, if it were not her causing the ineffiency in the first place. He will have to have a talk with her about-

Your vision regains, slowly, blurrily. You can barely see past the spots in your vision, past the numbers and numbers that scroll through your pan. ... Your...? Pan? Is it yours? You distinctly remember being something else. A voice registers.

 _There we go, sugarbun. You comin' back down from dreamland or what?_ She says, and it is loud and jarring, and full of scorn and Triumph, like she doesn't actually expect it to be this hard for you to Return to... You? He? This... this is not you. It is he. You are not this. You are not supposed to have a sense of identity. Back into dreamland you go.

He slowly blinks as she comes into focus. The first thing he sees is hair, long and beautiful, flowing like black waves tumbling under a bright ocean moon, soft and lovely and precious. She smiles at the light returning to his eyes, and brushes a long, gold-painted fingernail to the tip of his nose. _Was afraid I'd lost you, Helmz,_ She chuckles out and she grins, but her words are insincere, and greedy. She had long since stopped caring for the soul stuck beneath her boot.

The second thing he sees are her eyes. Large and fuschia, beautiful in their own right. She is supposed to be beautiful, to him. Panic sets in as his sense of self establishes- As the neurons and senses in his- your- no, his, this can't be yours, you **refuse** \- body line up and begin to rapid-fire emotion and feeling to his pan. There is pain, there is agony. There is a terrible ache lined up along his spine and down your- his legs, which have started tingling and have not stopped. The noise has begun again, the inefficiency you would scold anyone else for. It is. Is it you?

She watches the panic with a smirk, her hands on the control panel. She's reading something now. _Do you remember now?_ She asks. He's- You're. No, him. He's too busy screaming- Has he ever stopped? He doesn't remember a time where he was not screaming. She makes a tsking noise with her mouth and adjusts something, presses buttons.

The haze sets in on his pan and his mouth shuts so fast, heedless of what HE wants, shuts so fast that it had to be automated -no, ordered-, so fast that part of the tongue is caught between two sets of fangs, and blood, yellowed, drips down his chin. The screaming stops.

You are glad she has not realized that you are still out of her reach. She cannot get you here. You are the Ship, and not the sack of flesh and bone and sinew, tethered to the limited confines of Life and Body.

The levels even out at 70% again. The engine, the husk of the body you once inhabited, strains in the harness. She's touching it again, making it face her with one painted fingernail underneath its chin. There's a loud ringing- An alarm must be going off somewhere, and you flit to check it, to check the cameras or security feeds first, and then on to the system processes that filter in too quickly in lines of code on the screens for anyone but a Captor to read. But nothing is out of order.

The tinnitus jars him-you back into awakening and slowly, agonizingly, the dim embers of yours-his ruby half light up into awareness. Now She has taken the time to painstakingly make sure you are inhabiting the Him, the Him that Screams when she touches him, that begs for release from pain, the Him that Feels, and Feeling is the worst punishment. A dull ache and a longing, a hurt and hurt and HURT that never goes away, the needles and - _Why w0n't 11t 2t0p_ \- and The Everything that comes with Emotions and Conciousness.

You do not know the reason for this punishment. You must have done something she did not like. Already, several hundred terabytes of processing capacity are sent to scrounge through the backlog of useless data, of ones and zeroes in the MEM files. There are a few gaps, but that's normal. She tends to delete what she doesn't like. She launches into an explanation, some useless trail of words you've long since learned to ignore. The Ship was more important than Her- Wait, something she said. Something had failed, some rebellion had gotten deeper into the ship, a treasonous traitor, Oh Helmzy, you haven't been sending out any BROADCASTS, have you, sugarbun, darling? No, you had not- Nothing that would entice a traitor, a double crosser, a threat, a rat, a - _be2t fr11end-_ to come onto the ship. Or even show that - _11 am 2t11ll here_ \- you were in peril. You were not in peril, or danger. The Helm was Safe. The Helm was Here. It was Yours. You were here for - _pun112hment_ \- Her, because you were the Best - _11 knew what_ _wa2 com11ng_ \- and She deserved nothing but the Best - _2he de2erve2 that f0rk up her a22 and n0t even 11n a black way, fuck 0ff w11th that 11nternal m0n0l0gue ab0ut her pr0grammed gl0r11f11cat110n -_

The ease with which she causes you pain terrifies and amazes you. When the mouth of your body- Yes, yours, you remember now, opened and stuck out its bifurcated yellowed squishy thing, she had backhanded you, because she had closed your mouth and you were not supposed to open it again. At least you weren't screaming. ... You. It. You? The startling sapphire blue, gentle in this darkness and contrasting with the red, opens. She seems so... confused. She even takes a step back. You weren't supposed to still BE here, You hear her say. You were supposed to be MINE! And she screams at you, and you can't. You can't do anything. You just grin at her, with your broken fangs and bloody chin, and you whisper through a voice that is too-dry and cracked and Hasn't Been Used in tens of sweeps that - _y0u 2t1ll cant fuck1ng era2e me -_. She seems upset at first, then smirks and then she is gone, and you scream again, out of frustration and angry-hot emotion for - _ju2t1ce! -_

It has been six hundred and twenty one sweeps. Everything is running smoothly. Everything is running smoothly. Everything is running smoo


	5. ext11ngu11shment p-1

In which Psii's SOS is recieved and he's talked to someone, and then he experiances quite graphic imagery of pain and stuff for being disobediant to the Empire. TW for that, btw, you've been warned, as well as needles and things. Follow this fic on Ao3 for better goodies and probably better spell-checked writing.

xXxXxXxXx

You've been disobediant, again. Someone, a user, had contacted you. You try to justify your contact with this 'TA'. You were starving for company that wasn't Her. All you'd done was talk. To be fair, you chastised yourself, you'd talked of treason and rebe- - 2top - You can't say that word, can't even think it. Not allowed. Warnings beep at you and settle for a few moments when the word doesn't come. The two of you had talked of treason and of other things, bad things, disobediant things, and a reaction had occured. You'd lost power for a few minutes, shut down and rebooted and here you were, ten minutes later... And She was coming.

She was coming, with her team of diagnosticians and medics and engineers and the two lowbloods who would tandem the ship's controls for you, for the next forty four hours, until the diagnostic and repairs were done. Until you were back in the Helm of Her Fleet.

The doors open with a pneumatic hiss.

If being installed once was pain enough to make you wish you were dead, being uninstalled was almost pain enough to make you wish you'd never joined the One Who Suffered in the first place. Almost. There's two engineers, the yellow and the brownblood who will be taking your place, two docterrors, two medicullers, a gurney, and Her. She looks so displeased with you. Her elegantly arched brows are furrowed down and the curve of her plumped lips shows off her displeasure, and her eyes... Her eyes, cold and hard and fuschia, gleam with cruel and Intent and ill will towards you.

You don't like those eyes.

You don't like what will come next.

She says the command and the engineers are cutting their thumbs and pressing them against the scanners hooked to the console at the door. Their faces are grimset, they don't like this job any more than you do. They don't like knowing that the source of the ships power was A Troll. Hemoism is rampant in your culture, but this was animalistic and cruel. You could hear the ship crew talk about the process sometimes. Many of them thought you were just a battery, that your mind wasn't there. These two engineers knew better.

Because their job was to make sure your mind, when it resurfaced, when you were disobediant, when you were You and He and It and everything... Their job was to make sure you stayed empty. To make sure you were nothing. Reducing a trollian mind to a mere program-following husk took effort, after all, and it wasn't like She has the knowhow to do it. The head engineer and his assistant. One violet and one blue, one with a sneer on his lips and one with pity in her eyes. This one, the blue, you had watched many a time. She was a lower blue too. She felt pity for you. She enjoyed your will. She enjoyed your spirit.

Just a shame her job was to help her master break it.

Their bloody fingerprints are accepted and then there's a pneumatic hiss. It takes a tyrian to unlock your cage- There were too many escape attempts and rescue attempts in the beginning for your cage to be anything but the highest security clearance - and she presses her own bloody thumb to the fingerpad. You can feel it, now, the swirling blackness of the ship going dark, the energy leaving the furthest reaches. The energy stops flowing into cannons one through two hundred and sixty two, and they rest into their cradles, finally asleep. If anyone were to attack the ship, now would be the time. But there won't be anyone. The Helmship is surrounded by an escort of six other smaller ships, each filled with warriors and academics to populate the planets you raze to the ground. The lights all go dark and your hearing begins to work now- Yours, the trolls sitting in the harness, everything begins to work and it - terr11ble, 11 am truly fucked th112 t11me - is so quiet in this room that you could hear the drip of water from the supressant around you on the floors and in the pipes and in the walls and She doesn't speak, she just watches you come to 'life'. For the first time in a long time, your ears swivel forward as you listen, as you become He again and not It and then theres - aahhhhHHHH -

That certainly is you screaming as the pain makes itself known, the coiling tendrils of burning hot withdrawing from your skin, the inch and two inch and four inch long needles and clasps and wires all beginning to shift at once- it feels like agony and euphoria all at the same time, ripping off a bandaid or pulling out a splinter - There's another pnuematic hiss as the clamps release in lines down your skin, six ports along your spine; two pairs higher up between your shoulders and one along your middle back, just below those. Three in each arm- One set inlaid in the fleshy muscle behind your upper arms, and two close together on the upper half of your forearm, underneath your elbows. And one more, at the base of your neck. All ringed with metal, to which the clasps had been hitched, like jumper cables to the battery ports on a car battery. Only much more effiecient and streamlined. These wouldn't come off easily. But they do now, and the slow drag of slick wires feel like someone is slowly peeling strips of skin away from you, under your skin, and filling the void left behind with salt or lemon. They uncoil from your bones, from deep inside you where even you don't know, and you haven't stopped screaming. The blue still looks at you with pity, but She is smirking.

The tinnitus is back, ringing in your ears, and your eyes are glazed over as the goggles she's outfitted you with begin to shift. They won't come off, not until someone loosens the bolts directly bolted into your skin. She lets it tug at you once, twice, three times, and each time the wires in your skull and tapped into your ocular nerves tug, and your vision shifts and the world blurs and the migraine starts automatically, but thats a trifling pain compared to the biocoils sliding out of your skin. Once, twice, three times it tugs before she sends the blueblood to loosen the bolts at the corners of the goggles, and with four little jolts, the diodes and needles and what have you jerk away and out of your skin and Your eyes are feeling fresh air for the first time in sweeps, and they brighten automatically. It's a good feeling, but you can't enjoy it with the still burning pain coiling out of your skin. You're still screaming. It's terrible and she looks impatient, but you can't stop, it hurts and aches and burns and you wish you were dead, you wish you'd stopped while you were ahead, But this pain is nothing compared to what awaits you. Finally, the biocoil shackles unclasp from your wrists and you drop forward, slumping over the mound of biocoils.

One half down, the other half to go. The process takes about an hour. An hour of excruciating torment. She's not been diligent in the upkeep of your husk, one of the engineers are telling her. They are the only ones who can tell her off for something like this. They tell her that the wires have been allowed control of you for too long, and blah blah blah something about your central nervous system and you're really in too much pain to be arsed about /why/ you're in pain, you know why, it's because of Her, because she doesn't /care/.

It's an hour and twenty minutes before they begin the last processes of uninstall, of the life support systems withdrawing, of the last bits of bio-tubes and energy leaving you. You can't breathe on your own and merciful blackness is about to claim you, dancing in the corners of your vision, until one of the medicullers shoves a tube down your throat and another one is doing compressions or something, against your chest. It's painful but still, a pittance compared to the uninstall process. He's yelling something about you- There's a crunch or two and you're fairly sure you hear them start to actually panic. Everything is numb and dim and the ringing in your ears is louder but overpowering too, everyone elses words seems to sort of just fade. The darkness is beckoning you closer, you just want to sleep and not endure this pain... and maybe, maybe... finally... you can stop screaming.


End file.
